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dice living
 

//.. '' _01001 from today on 2001-06-28 14:01 [#00011208]



The concept of diceliving is simple to explain. Start by
grabbing a sheet of blank paper and putting the number 1
through 6 down the left hand side. Then, next to them, write
six things that part of you wants to do. Not necessarily all
of you - but for whatever reason, some portion of you feels
that doing this would be fun, cool, worthwhile - whatever.

Now, make it quite clear to yourself that whatever you roll,
you will do that option. This is the time to change your
mind and put down something more sensible. Check and make
sure that all the options are legal, moral, and safe - and
check one more time that, should the dice roll an option,
you'll be ok with doing it. Then roll the dice, read off the
answer, and go and do it. That's it!

Most people don't initially believe that anyone could
seriously suggest that they do this for important,
life-altering decisions - It just goes against too much of
the grain of what society says. This initial stage of
pants-peeing is the largest obstacle for new dicers - let me
be quite clear that this is a serious suggestion, and yes,
many people, myself included, live their lives to a greater
or lesser extent by the rule of the die.

Chuck out one, two, or all six of the options below, and
replace them with your own - then throw a dice to choose.

Don't read any more of this entry. Find something better to
do with your time.
Finish reading this entry - and do not stop for any reason,
including phone, doorbell, whatever.
Read this entry and try to fervently agree with everything
said, even if normally you'd think it was garbage.
Read this entry, and try to fervently disagree with
everything said, even if normally you might think it made
some sense.
Make six options, roll a dice, and do what the die commands.
Now - right this moment.
Take up diceliving. How will you know if you like it unless
you try it?

Types of options

To start off, it's generally best to put down a number of
easy options - you might choose which of a number of books
you've always wanted to read you'll go and rent from the
library, or which tie of a number of acceptable ones you
might put on for a dinner. Keep it small, keep it simple.
Most of all, keep it fun - laughter IS dicing.

Putting options down which are too difficult at the start
often causes the novice dicer to disobey the dice. This is
refered to as choking, and is very dangerous. Without the
certainty that the dice must be obeyed, they lose their
power, and the dicer is effectively back at square one - but
now slightly more smug - further away than ever from
enlightenment.

Often people wander through life quite unaware of the extent
to which they are ruled by habit and unconscious thought.
For them, there is the method of veto. The idea of this is
simple - before doing any large thing - roll a dice. If it
comes up a six, the dice has vetoed this - you'll have to
find some other way of doing it. An alternative version has
the veto occuring only on a double six, but the dice are
rolled more frequently.

Later on, and generally in a perfectly natural process,
slightly more risky options start to enter the list - ones
which bring up both excitement and fear. This generally
continues until some comfortable level of risk is attained,
and decisions are usually limited to some area which is
acceptable to the dicer - where this is varies from person
to person, with some people stopping earlier than others.
Some people pause here briefly to enjoy the surroundings
before moving on, but many stay here for a long time, before
something shakes them up and they move on. This is known as
constipation.

To try and reduce the risk of constipation, two standard
methods have been developed - the first is 'Russian
Roulette' - out of each six options, one must be something
decidedly unpleasant. For example, out of a choice of 6
things to go and do in the evening, one of them might be to
go to a Karaoke bar. Hopefully, the dicer will do something
that is 'unpleasant', and realise that actually it's not so
bad after all. The world went on, and the following morning
the sun still rose.

The second method is that suggested by Dr. Rhinehart - and I
will let him take over the explanation here:

... we use mostly the method of scare. We tell the patient
to cast the dice concerning his biggest problem: 'Give the
dice the option of your getting into bed with your mother
and feeling her up.' 'Let the dice decide whether you say:
"Up yours, Dad".' 'Cast a die to see whether you're going to
destroy your diaries.'

The patient generally craps or faints, but when he revives
we suggest something a little less threatening, but still
outside his previous diceliving area. In utter gratefulness
he goes along.

Log off h2g2, and don't come back for a week. When you come
back, write an entry in your journal making up some wild
story about how you had to leave h2g2 because you'd been
called up to perform some vital task for the FBI, or
somesuch flight of fantasy.

Purpose

Everyone wants to find a reason to justify their actions -
and even something as patently absurd as dicing can be
accepted if you can come up with an appropriate
justification. So here are a few, all of which are equally
meaningless and untrue.

For fun!

There's nothing like surrendering your will to an inanimate
object and claiming that, sorry, you have to go out and
party because the dice told you to. You'd love to be
sensible and think about the following morning, but the dice
have spoken. I guess it's kind of like being the submissive
person in an S&M relationship. Kind of.

Get out of jail free

A recurring theme in Luke's books is the difficulty of
prosecuting people using the dice as their defence,
particularly as the dicelife can be claimed as a religion
(see below). The other problem is that pretty much all the
evidence given will be unreliable because it is tainted with
the unpredictability of the dice. Whether this is true in
reality is unknown.

A closer relationship with God

This varies from religion to religion, but God is generally
pictured as all-powerful, and all-seeing. If this God can
see every bird that falls from the sky, can he not also see
every dice that falls from a hand?

So if you really want to ask God what you want to do with
your life, the dice are a foolproof way of doing so, and the
beauty of the system is that you can't ignore what He says
to you - because it's there on the table in a number of
dots.

Chance is good

Simply put, chance is good. The life of an average person is
too structured, too conformist, and the dice helps people to
break out of that shell. Diceliving breeds eccentricity, and
it breaks down barriers and both of these things are
definately things to be aimed at.

People in general just aren't spontaneous enough - they
calculate too heavily before moving, they worry, they fret.
They think their friends will view them in a bad light. And
it's all unneeded - a roll of the dice can take it away.

The deeper meaning

Everyone has urges which they refuse. Everyone has ideas
which they stamp on. And what causes them to refuse it or
stamp on it? The ego. The self. The little man in the top of
the brain, pulling the levers.

Luke argued that those unanswered urges and unfulfilled
dreams were actually dormant personalities. He claimed that
everyone is effected by multiple personality 'disorder', but
that in most people one self had become dominant, and seized
control of the body for day to day activity. The tyranny of
the ego.

Further, this is a bad thing. The act of suppressing all
these alternate personalities makes people's lives hard.
Come to think of it, for modern life, you need all those
personalities. A single personality trying to live with
everything life throws at it would rapidly go insane.

So, allowing your minority personalities to express
themselves is a good thing - and the best way to do this is
with the dice. Because each option has only a 1 in 6 chance
of happening, the dominant personality doesn't feel the need
to control each option so heavily, and freedom and democracy
can be let into your mind.



 

streamer on 2001-06-28 14:07 [#00011211]



I couldn't be bothered to read that whole entry, but I take
it you've read Diceman by Luke Rhinehart? A good read.


 

dingle berry from on a small plastic chair breathing fire on 2001-06-28 14:12 [#00011213]



dice
nice
too much fucking hard sketchy work if u ask me
do you have a job or something???


 

m on 2001-06-28 18:04 [#00011266]



You know, this emperor Nero used to sleep with his mom. I
like the part about putting completely false information in
your diary in order to fool your future self, he he heh.


 

//.. '' _01001 on 2001-08-19 20:51 [#00023154]



um...

read it. become a fool overnight


 

Bertrand Russell on 2001-08-19 21:15 [#00023158]



This is retarded.


 


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